Author Topic: The Inn at the Bottom of the Hill  (Read 1649 times)

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Offline Libby

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The Inn at the Bottom of the Hill
« on: August 04, 2020, 09:32:17 PM »

Life on the Isle of the Goddess was something of a blessing and a curse for those who called the rocky island their home. On the upside you were living on the most sacred spot on Mundus, the place where the beautiful Goddess Sessifet ensured that humans were permitted to continue by sacrificing her perfect physical form and at that moment the first Queen of Lodja had in turn sacrificed her independence to share her body with the Goddess. It meant anyone living on the Isle was as close to the Goddess as you could get and that carried with it a serenity that always seemed to envelope the island. The downside though was two fold. The first was the island spent a good deal of time cut off from the outside world as the roadway linking it with the mainland city of Gaia was only usable for a few hours everyday before the Alucard swallowed it up. The second problem was that if you were like Ariadna Matveev it reinforced everday the great gap in society. Everyday since being a little girl she would look out of the upstairs window of the Inn that her family owned, the only inn on the isle. She'd watch guests to the island dressed in finery make their way up the steep hill to the Palace at the top which stood perched overlooking Sessifet's domain. On some nights you'd even hear the music and laughter coming from the Palace as they hosted some function and then she'd sneak peeks out the window when in the early hours expensive cars would shuttle the guests down to the nearby quay where motor launches took them back to the mainland. Despite having lived on the Isle all of her 24 years Ariadna had only ascended up to the Palace once and then that had been accompanying her father when he had gone to deliver some ale casks for an event there.

The Isle though had presented Ariadna with some of her fondest memories she remembered having days with her big sister Yuliaand her little brother Rolan playing by the rock pools that edged the whole island often being sent out with metallic buckets to comb the small beaches between them for razorclams which their mother would "Buy" off them and cook up for the customers in the inn. The inn guests were a strange mix, one week you'd get lots and lots of civil servant types who were on the island for big ministerial meetings but deemed not important enough to be given rooms within the Palace, then the next week there would be some interesting people from another nation. The inn provided them clean, comfortable and actually very luxuorious rooms and Ariadna's mother was proud of having a chance to look after what she called "the guests of Sessifet." It was no surprise then that the pride the family had in their inn had seen Yulia, Ariadna and Rolan pushed towards working in the business from an early age. Ariadna could still remember being 10 years old and getting home from school, dumping her old brown leather sacthel in her room and donning the freshly laundried apron her mother had left on the bed. She'd hurry downstairs and begin collacting glasses and finished plates carrying them into the kitchen for big sister to load into the dishwasher. From the age of 13 she was pouring pints and serving vodka, even to the off duty guardsman from the Palace who also functioned as the Isle's police force, not that the island needed any Police other than for the odd late night drunk in the inn, but then Ariadna's father was a huge man who by the time the Guardsman arrived had either calmed things down or subdued any problems. The problem was Ariadna wanted more from life than cooking, cleaning and serving booze and luckily for her she had a brain.

It had been a hard discussion but with three children Ariadna's parents knew Yulia and Rolan would be more than enough to carry on the family business. At that parents evening when she'd been 14 her teacher had said Ariadna should go to University and a deal had been struck. If Ariadna would work evenings and weekends in the inn then her parents would help fund her education. Ariadna then felt a different pressure. This pressure wasn't the one of serving someone their soup without pouring it in their lap it was the pressure of making her families commitment worth it and when she'd been offered a place at University they couldn't have been prouder. She was the first of the family to have even been considered clever enough for University and the family had again said they'd support her if she worked still in the inn. That had been a struggle. Everyday she's get up extra early to make sure she caught either the bus or boat to the mainland in order to make sure she could do her lab work before the day's classes began, then as soon as lectures had finished she'd hit the books before getting back to the Isle. It still made her smile, she'd come in, drop her text books and lab coat only to see the fresh white apron waiting for her. Now as she was in her final year of her Masters she knew it would be unfair to keep asking her parents to pay for her education and so with the exams just a few weeks away she consigned herself to one of two fates. The first would be the inn at the bottom of the hill. A life spent toiling in the family business until some Guardsman or cook or servant from the Palace wooed her and then she'd become another one of the "Isle Wives". The alternative was to leave the island all together. She'd have a Master's degree in Chemistry and surely that would make her a hot commodity in the world of employment, add to that the fact she was a Plebleian and any company could brag about giving oppurtunities to the Plebs by employing her. She was all but resigned to leaving the island until a sunny summers evening in the bar.

The sound of the ball from the Palace was weaving its way down the hill and the inn was full of various drivers and other members of the toffs up the hills households. The door opened and a man walked in looking very out of place. It was a moment that would likely change her life.